Six months after HP absorbed the boutique vendor Voodoo PC, the company sheds some light on its eventual plans

Late last week Hewlett-Packard showcased the fruits of its Voodoo PC acquisition and the HP Labs development team.

"It became clear that there has been
work going on even prior to the Voodoo acquisition and now the wheels
are spinning freely, and things are anything but status quo," said HP Global Gaming Chief Technology Officer and DailyTech Blogger Rahul Sood.

Much of HP's showcase included technology derived from HP Labs projects. HP's Misto project, for example, integrates a 50" touch screen into a coffee table. The interface is designed as a proof-of-concept for gamers, but Sood isn't discounting its usefulness for other applications.

"Well, we have been exploring all types of technologies which pertain to gaming, including handheld, display, interface, and many others. We have enough intellectual property within HP to wallpaper the building," states Sood. "These research scientists within HP Labs are absolute geniuses, they have some interesting projects yet to be unveiled. The interesting thing is many of the projects they are working on are not specific to gaming - we have recognized these areas and the creative juices are flowing."

Voodoo PC built its niche on the no-expense-spared ultra enthusiasts. Although HP is a bit more grounded when it comes to catering to the masses, Voodoo's influence in HP Labs is more than apparent. In particular, HP demonstrated its nine-projector interface capable of displaying images bright enough to see outside in full daylight. HP's interlacing technology has shown up on other projector based projects; at the Consumer Electronics Show last January the company demonstrated its immersive driving simulator using multiple projectors interlaced together.

However, six months after HP's acquisition of Voodoo, the company still has not shipped an official HP-Voodoo collaborated PC yet. HP continues to build Voodoo's boutique PCs, mid-range PCs under the Hewlett-Packard brand and entry level products under the Compaq brand. The company still lacks a direct competitor to Dell's XPS line.

"We recognized that there is a gap between HP and Voodoo – and we believe this gap is significant enough that we need to jump into the sandbox and draw the line. We never said anything about creating a fourth brand but there is indeed speculation."

Sood closes, "As I said at the event in San Francisco, our funnel is full of ideas; you’ll see some new stuff as early as this year."

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I've priced out numerous VoodooPC's over the years, and never could justify the purchase. Each time I ended up ordering as good or better parts myself and putting the machine together.

One thing I've found is that building a PC seems to be getting easier these days. My last PC with a C2D, Silverstone Case, EVGA 680 MB, and PCP&C power supply was really easy to put together. I installed Vista Ultimate (OEM) which was also very, very easy off DVD and was up and running immediate. All this for less than half of what a Voodoo would have cost...